SiteGround Review, Rating & Secret Unveiled 2016

Having been in the industry for 10 years, SiteGround has been recognized as one of the best hosting companies. However, is it good enough for hosting websites? The answer can be found in the following comprehensive review we made on the price, feature, compatibility, reliability, performance and technical support of its hosting service.

We have been hosted 1 medium sized website with this service for about 6 months, and kept monitoring the site closely. In addition, we have browsed numerous verified feedbacks to learn how other users think about this service.

SiteGround has released 3 different shared hosting plans for webmasters to host their websites, so that they are able to choose the most proper one according to their current budget and needs. The packages are named as StartUp, GrowBig and GoGeek, the regular price of which is $9.95/mo, $14.95/mo and $29.95/mo. Now, the company is offering a considerable discount, with which the price is low to $3.95/mo, $7.95/mo and $14.95/mo.

In addition to the considerable discount, this web host provides 30 days money back guarantee, which means customers are able to ask for a refund if they want to cancel their accounts in the first 30 days. In this way, customers are capable of putting their money in safe. Note that this company only supports credit cards.

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SiteGround Speed Review2.50 of 5

SiteGround positions their data centers strategically to guarantee direct connectivity with minimum connection hops. Besides, all their facilities are with good network connectivity provided by multiple major carriers. In this way, customers are guaranteed to run websites with a rapid speed. According to our monitoring result, the server response time of this company is 634ms.

However, for many fast hosting providers like InMotion Hosting ensuring the server response time less than 300ms, SiteGround seems not to achieve a good performance. Considering that high-speed is an essential factor for successful online presence, you need to think twice before going with SiteGround.

SiteGround Reliability Review3.00 of 5

SiteGround has three data centers located in Singapore, Amsterdam and Chicago severally, which enables customers to choose the closest one to get the best connection. It is undeniable that SiteGround has excellent hardware and infrastructure, but we are still a little disappointed about its performance in uptime.

In recent two years, our monitoring team has kept monitoring SiteGround uptime, and we thought that the company would not let us down considering its robust facilities. In fact, we are not surprised for complaints from its clients after the long-period test.

Downtimes frequently incur especially in peaks. Besides, we also saw a downtime lasting for over two hours caused by hardware replacement of the company in last month.

SiteGround Feature Review3.00 of 5

SiteGround has three shared hosting,including StartUp, GrowBig and GoGeek. The three plans are much more expensive when compared with most other shared hosting services. In this part, we’d like to present you more detailed information about their features. And you’ll know whether SiteGround is worthwhile.

The three hosting plans include 10 GB, 20 GB and 30 GB respectively, which are largely less than unlimited. As for the capability, they are designed for websites with different visits: 10,000 visits for StartUp, 25,000 visits for GrowBig and 100,000 visits for GoGeek.

Apart from above features, the three plans have some similar features like cPanel, one free domain name, unlimited data transfer and unlimited MySQL databases. To be honest, these features are basic and enough for most small traffic websites. But we think people can get more resources and better services at the same cost.

SiteGround Technical Support Review2.50 of 5

So far, SiteGround has only about 20 staffs altogether. In terms of its technical support team, it is insufficient for customers. Therefore, there is no wonder that customers always complain about its slow reaction and delayed response.

The company provides 24/7 phone, tickets and live chat service, and promises to reply instantly. But the truth tells an utterly different story. Every time we contact its help center, staffs on the other side answer after minutes.

What's worse, the staffs are not knowledgeable enough in hosting and well-trained. Some people even find that some staffs cannot speak English well, which, in our opinions, may be employees from Asia-Pacific regions. If you are a native English speaker, you may need to think it over.

SiteGround Review for Hosting WordPress2.50 of 5

SiteGround claims that its shared hosting plans are 100% compatible with WordPress, because they meet the minimal requirements of running this script. According to our survey, the company does offer multiple versions of PHP including PHP 5.5, PHP 5.4, PHP 5.3, and more. In addition, MySQL 5.2 and Apache 2.2 are provided. Therefore, the WordPress hosting service from this host is 100% compatible. Some outstanding features contributing to the compatibility are:

Apache mod_rewrite module is installed by default.

PHP runs as suPHP to increase the security of websites.

PHP memory_limit is set to be 128 MB that is enough to host a small to medium sized website.

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We've been an independent web hosting review site, and have reviewed 200+ web hosts since 2006 - trying to help web masters find the best hosting deals based on the budget and requirement, including shared web hosting, VPS hosting, reseller hosting and dedicated servers.